


For Better or Worse

by Piece_of_shit



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Parenting, Canonical Child Abuse, Ghost Tom Riddle but not really, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, I don't feel comfortable shipping them atm because of the power dynamic, Isolation, Just a different version, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Mentions Of Schizophrenia, Multi, Not A Fix-It, POV Harry Potter, POV Tom Riddle, TW: descriptions of child abuse, Tom Riddle trying to be better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22884799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piece_of_shit/pseuds/Piece_of_shit
Summary: Things Harry Didn't Know- His parents were wizards that died in a Wizarding War- He survived the Killing Curse as a baby- He was a Horcrux- He wasn't a schizo, the Angry Wizard (that only he could see) was once real- That same Angry Wizard was responsible for all of the above
Relationships: Harry Potter & Tom Riddle, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 7
Kudos: 80





	1. Chapter 1

Voldemort had been defeated by a baby.

He, the Dark Lord, defeated. By. A. Baby.

And not just defeated. No, he was killed. Somehow that tiny creature had literally redirected an Unforgivable, in the middle of casting it.

He was furious.

The only reason why he knew this now, is because he was stuck with that same baby. Harry Potter, defeater of the Dark Lord, now dragged Voldemort wherever he went. It didn’t matter that he despised every second of this existence. It just was.

It didn’t take long to find out that no one else could see or hear him. When Severus had entered the Potter home to weep for that mudblood, he had shouted and screamed, tried to kick or maim him, but nothing worked.

More disturbingly was when Albus Dumbledore arrived, with that giant oaf Hagrid. They didn’t even acknowledge him. Those damned pieces of filth.

He took in his form. The same deep black robes still shrouded his figure. His pocket contained his wand. It appeared that his body was solid, the same pale skin and imposing stature.

But he could not move physical things. He watched in horror as his hand moved through a branch like it did not exist. Or rather, he did not exist.

Harry Potter had been left with his muggle aunt and uncle. It almost delighted him to see the little creature laying in a basket on a doorstep. How demeaning. No wizards wanted this child, though he was the ‘Savior of the Wizarding World.’

His excitement grew to see the reaction of those two pieces of filth react to the child. Outrage. Disgust. Spite. Even a hint of violence came through when the woman practically dug her pristine fingernails into the thick blanket. This is what muggles were. This is why muggles deserved a genocide. Their bodies were empty of both magic and soul.

Though he may no longer exist in the world, he was alive, and he could watch as his conqueror was tormented by his own uncaring family. That would be enough.

It did not take long to discover just how powerless he was.

Every single spell he tried, failed. His power fueled each spell, pushing him magic to the limit, yet nothing. He tried casting on furniture. The muggles. Plants, animals, even Harry. Damn whoever put him in this state. Damn their parents and children. He screamed in fury, vaguely noting the Potter child crying in response.

What was the point of a wand, if it could not be used to exhibit one’s power and strength? What was the point of a wizard, if he existed without magic? At that point, they were a squib, or worse: a muggle.

His next mission was to leave Harry. There was nothing to be done here.

It seems that Fate was torturing him, because leaving Harry’s presence would result in a forceful push back. The pain he felt from falling down was an odd sensation, considering he no longer had a physical body. He was instantly back on his feet, feeling rage burn within him.

Again he tried to cast curses and Unforgivables onto the Potter child, and again, there was no result.

Damn it all.

His next endeavor was calling upon his Death Eaters. None had been able to sense his presence within this accursed muggle house, but there was a chance he could call out for them.

He pulled his sleeve down to touch his Dark Mark, but there was nothing but smooth pale skin. Upon searching within his magical connections, he found none remaining.

All of the work he had done, gone.

The wave of fury that came over him was nearly blinding. He grabbed his wand and cursed anything in sight. No magic flowed through him and out his wand. This, he was aware of, but it didn’t stop him shouting the spells at the top of his lungs.

There were no options for him. Simply put, he was stuck with the Potter child. He had no magic, no physical existence and no remaining ties.

Days passed, and he wracked his brain, trying to find a solution. The ideas slowly became weaker and weaker, until he was only left with rage.

The Dark Lord, Voldemort, now spent his days yelling, brooding, and throwing failed curses at the muggles. Days blurred together.

He found that, even though he was non-corporeal, he still slept. Those times were nearly bliss, in comparison to…the awake times. Only blackness awaited him upon falling asleep. He had no idea if he still had any form during hours, but he hoped not.

Potter was learning to speak, albeit slowly. Those muggles put minimal effort into raising him. It became difficult to enjoy the neglect that child suffered.

There was little here that could be considered entertaining. If Harry was in earshot, there was a chance of following a show on the ‘telly.’ The whining of the muggle child was annoying at best. The disdain from the muggles towards Potter quickly lost its appeal. In fact, any comment about Harry being a freak or being useless would drive red into his vision.

Since there was nothing to do, Voldemort had a lot of time to consider why those muggles bothered him. Certainly, the fact that they were muggles contributed, but something deeper was causing the intensity.

When the muggle child made a comment about how Potter’s parents were dead, and Harry was going to be unwanted forever, it suddenly made sense.

The orphanage.

It had been so long since he last thought of the place. Wool’s Orphanage in London. The other children would bully him, until they learned to fear him. The adults would scold and persecute him, until they cowered in his presence.

Learning about his magical abilities had been a godsend. It meant he could leave. There was a war in the muggle world that could kill him easily, and Hogwarts was his way out. But then summer came, and he was sent back, despite his begging.

He spent many days remembering every lonely and painful day he spent in that place.

Then he spent many days remembering the moments of fear. Bombs exploding the buildings that had always been there. Huddling in the underground in a disgusting pile of muggle children.

His most positive moments came later in his life, from forcing his classmates to submit, then for his Death Eaters to obey his every whim. It had been glorious to see these influential and high-status wizards bow before him. It was beyond glorious, it was like…like everything was suddenly right in the world.

Now, he was reduced to nothing but an existence of boredom and rage. Time passed infinitely slowly, yet he would occasionally come about to see that the season had changed.

It occurred to him that none of this should be happening.

He certainly died that night in the Potter house. That much could not be denied.

But what kind of an existence was this? This certainly could not be death. Neither could this be life. So where did that leave him? What was he?

This question left him thinking for many days—after all, he had nothing but time.

Harry, of course, noticed him. The child’s bright green eyes often looked at him quizzically. One could only imagine what was going through the boy’s head. He himself had no explanation, let alone one for the boy.

It was infuriating to watch the abuse and neglect of the muggles towards Harry, but it became more and more irritating to watch the boy simply cower and submit. What a weak little thing. (And yet, the child had defeated him.)

There had to be some sort of hidden power in the boy. Something, anything. As long as it proved he wasn’t still a speck of dust in the middle of war. A shameful, weak little orphan.

At this point, he didn’t know if he was talking about himself or the boy.

The boy was now 5 years old. Aside from instances of accidental magic, there was no indication of real power. At one point, he went into a fit of rage over the implications of this. He didn’t even know what he yelled anymore, perhaps something about weakness.

The boy certainly feared him now. There were moments that he caught the boy staring with wide eyes, and a hasty redirection of his focus when he was realized. The boy also avoided his form at all costs. Even running to the other side of the room, or bumping into his relatives, or hiding under the blanket were done to escape him.

He had mixed reactions on this. The fear the boy showed was familiar, and brought back a sense of his former identity. The fear also alienated the one living person who could see and hear him. As much as he feared thinking it, he knew that his very being depended on the attention of others.

The boy’s fear itself became annoying. His initial thought was to discourage the boy from such bold displays of fear, but that would do no good. Doing this to the other children at the orphanage made them fear him more, and then avoid him. This was the opposite of what he wanted.

(He considered for a moment that he never would have done something like this in his lifetime. However, desperate times call for desperate measures.)

So he decided to start limiting his fits of rage.

Of course, this proved to be a great undertaking.

He thought over his normal process of yelling and cursing. It was regretful that he had a process in the first place, and how predictable it made him, and how little benefit it had.

Besides that, he found that his rage would grow when seeing the boy display weakness or fear, towards the muggles or towards himself. But why was he so sensitive about the boy’s behavior?

Well, the obvious answer was that his own magical power had faced the boy’s, and lost. However weak the boy was, his own strength must be weaker. And that was beyond disturbing. If he wanted to stop uselessly yelling and throwing curses, he needed to stop this.

The idea of a task, though purely cognitive and relatively menial, gave him life. It was something to do, and he was not accustomed to failure.

It was difficult, but he had maintained his calm for nearly a year now. The boy had grown, now child-sized rather than toddler-sized. It was rather odd to see the boy change. He could distinctly remember how he looked as a baby.

Also disorienting was the emergence of the boy’s character. The fear was gone, though the nervous manner remained around the muggles. There were moments of wit, catching him off guard, and making him muffle his laughter.

Unfortunately, as the boy grew older, chores were assigned to him at a near overwhelming rate. Yet the boy did it all without complaint, and within good time. He considered the boy’s industriousness carefully. It was admirable, in an objective way, but clearly miserable. He watched the boy nearly collapse into bed at the end of the day once he was released from the muggles’ control.

He hated to admit it, but he concluded that Harry’s childhood was worse than his had been.

School. It came time for Harry to attend classes with other muggle children, and since he was attached to the boy, this meant that he was also attending classes with muggle children.

The other children seemed restless around Harry. However, they seemed restless all the time, being made to sit in tiny chairs for hours. Harry seemed oblivious to the way other children avoided his quiet form. Perhaps they could sense, in the most unconscious of ways, that Harry was different. Perhaps they could even sense that there was another, more powerful dark being attached to the boy.

The topics of Harry’s classes were so very dull. Some of it was new to him—the curriculum from his time to Harry’s must have changed—but he did not notice the teacher very often.

Muggle technology had advanced quite a bit since his time. He would pass time by taking note of the changes in the muggle world surrounding him. The concept of automobiles alone had progressed far past his expectations.

Calculators, TVs, air conditioning, remote controls, CDs, telephones, speakers. So much of it was so new. The children, Harry included, did not seem to regard these things for long, so he averted his focus.

As the school year progressed, he could name all of Harry’s classmates, and describe their relationship with Harry. Most avoided him, a couple teased him, and one student had a light friendship with the boy.

Harry did not seem to care for much, even the teasing from other children. After doing his work, he waited in his chair quietly. It reminded him of his own childhood, just with less violence.

Summer came again. Harry turned 7. The muggle family were as bad as ever.

Then the next school year came, with much of the same experiences.

Life at home, however, went from bad to worse. The catalyst was the conversation where Harry had described the ‘Angry Wizard’ that he saw. The muggles became relentless.

Some of the abuse that Harry suffered transitioned into minor physical punishments. More chores were given. Food and sleep were withheld as punishment. Harry suffered, all without complaint.

When he saw a bruise on Harry’s arm, the rage he had been so good at controlling came back.

Something had to be done. Clearly no wizards would come to aid Harry, and no muggles seemed to notice the evident abuse. (For Merlin’s sake, the child’s collarbones were visible despite the uniform button-down.)

The only one who could help was himself.

This would require some planning.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry was very aware of how his aunt and uncle hated him. Dudley received all the affection they had to offer. Toys, praise, treats, everything. It was hard to tell how exactly how much stuff that Dudley got, when Harry didn’t have a reference point. He got hand-me-downs, the cupboard under the stairs, and glares.

Dudley took after his parents in many ways, including the constant barrage of angry insults. It was hard to believe that they were wrong. After all, there wasn’t any evidence to disprove them.

He was unwelcome, because he wasn’t his Aunt and Uncle’s child. He was useless, because he hadn’t cooked the bacon correctly. He was a freak because strange things would happen in the house, such as a lightbulb exploding when he was near.

And he was a psycho because he saw the Angry Wizard.

The Angry Wizard was always there. Sometimes he would sit still, and look angry. Sometimes he would furiously wave a wand and shout strange words. Sometimes he would watch Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon with hate, sometimes yelling foreign obscenities at them. Sometimes he glared at Harry as if he did something wrong.

The Angry Wizard rarely spoke to Harry. Whenever he did, he always seemed to be thinking aloud.

“A baby. A baby defeated me.”

“I should have listened to Severus, the traitor.”

“Dumbledore doesn’t care for the child, does he? This forsaken place reminds me of…there.”

“He’s a half-blood like me.”

Harry was a child, and the sight of a dark-robed man that only he could see, and was always with him, scared him beyond belief.

But then some sort of change happened when Harry was 5. Perhaps he was just growing up, and viewing things differently, but the Angry Wizard started to relax. Most often he appeared to be thinking quietly, with a blank rather than an angry expression. He did not yell and curse anymore. His presence was now something Harry could accept, and even ignore.

Harry wished he could have a real conversation with the Angry Wizard, since he had no other friends. Perhaps he wouldn’t be fun to talk to anyways. None of his words made sense to Harry. He was just 7 years old, so like any other kid, he was curious. The first time he mentioned the Angry Wizard to Aunt Petunia, he learned to _not_ be curious.

“Aunt Petunia, what’s a half-blood?”

She had been calmly drinking tea while reading a romance novel. Her teacup clattered to the dish. Harry froze in his movements, washing the dishes from lunch. His shoulders tensed, since the glare she shot at him was one that would lead to angry yelling.

“A what?”

“A-a-a half-blood.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“The wizard.”

Her eyes widened, and her face turned an angry red as her lips tightened. “What wizard?”

“Um…the one...I can see.” His voice had turned to a quiet and nervous squeak.

Her lips tightened further. One of her bony hands gripped the edge of the table so hard, her knuckles turned white. “Listen to me carefully, boy.” The tone of her voice shifted to something quiet and vicious. “There is no such thing as wizards, and there especially isn’t a wizard in this house. I never want to hear you talk about it ever again.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia.” He lowered his gaze from her face to her hands.

“Ever. If you do, you’ll be locked in your cupboard for a week.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia.” He prayed that she would not punish him anyways.

Her grip on the table’s edge loosened. The teacup was back in her hand, and she picked up her book as if nothing had happened. “Finish the dishes and go to your room.”

It was too hard to speak, so he just nodded.

After that day, the Dursely family added ‘psycho’ and ‘crazy’ to their litany of spite.

* * *

The Angry Wizard had been acting odd since that day. For months, he would sometimes mutter as if arguing with himself. He stared at Harry sometimes with an odd expression. It felt like the vague pity that his school teachers gave him, or like the examining gaze of the nosy neighbors.

Then the Angry Wizard spoke to him.

“Harry Potter. You need to leave this place.”

The clippers in his hand dropped to the flower bed. Usually, he avoided looking at the Angry Wizard, but he now snapped his focus to him. The man was facing the window of the house, not looking at Harry though he had addressed him for the first time ever.

“What?” he asked quietly. His heart was pounding, whether from panic or excitement, he didn’t know. The Angry Wizard was talking to him. Though it was small, it felt like the most important thing that had happened in his life.

“These…people do not care for you. I can no longer watch their treatment of you.”

So many thoughts were racing through his head. There were a million questions he wanted to ask the Angry Wizard, but this conversation brought up a million more. He was simply frozen, staring.

The Angry Wizard sighed. “Harry.”

“Yes?”

He pursed his lips, and looked away in thought. A hand rubbed at his face. “This isn’t working.” Another sigh, then he looked back at Harry. “Okay, I suppose you are quite surprised, and have many questions that you must have answers to, before we can begin our plans.”

Our plans? What? What was this wizard thinking?

The wizard made a gesture to prompt Harry to begin.

The first question he asked didn’t wasn’t said consciously. “Who are you?”

The question seemed to catch the wizard off guard. “Who am I? That…” There was a long pause before he answered.

“I used to be called…Tom.”

Tom. What a common name for the wizard that had accompanied him his entire life.

“Are you real? Why can’t other people see you?”

Another pause. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve been around me my whole life and you don’t know?”

The wizard, Tom, sent him a glare. “It’s nothing I’m familiar with, this whole phenomenon.” He waved a hand as if to illustrate.

“What’s a phenomenon?”

Tom groaned.

* * *

Explaining things to Harry became a game of ‘without truth’ and ‘answering honestly’. Tom Riddle, as he supposed he was called now, could not tell Harry that he murdered his parents, killed hundreds of people, and ruled an army of dark wizards as their Lord.

No, that would destroy all the work he had done towards building a relationship with Harry before it could begin.

They didn’t have a chance to talk for long, since the muggle woman started yelling at Harry again, telling him to get back to work. Their conversation resumed when Harry was in bed, in his cupboard under the stairs.

“Are wizards real?”

Tom had sat down in his usual spot, a small ledge on the wall. It wasn’t comfortable, but he really didn’t feel things in a physical sense anymore, so it didn’t matter. “Yes. You’re a wizard too, actually.”

Harry’s eyes widened, making his eyes appear even larger than they already were. “That’s…impossible.”

“Really? Then how do lightbulbs explode when you get upset? How do dishes fly from the cupboard when you’ve been locked in this room?”

That gave Harry pause. “But I don’t have a wand.”

“Well, I have a wand it does nothing for me, really.” He wiggled his wand as demonstration. “And accidental magic happens a lot with children, before they start learning how to use it properly.”

“So I don’t need a wand for magic?”

Now it was Tom’s turn to pause. Considering everything, wizards shouldn’t need a wand to use magic. Wizards used their magic before wands became functional enough to use. That meant that wizards had the ability to use magic without wands. And hadn’t he seen displays of wandless magic in his years?

Why hadn’t he attempted this before? It would have been rather advantageous, and he would be able to cast spells without being traced. That could have helped him in quite a few situations, before he had been a dark lord.

“I guess not.”

“Can you teach me?”

Harry’s expression was a mix of wonder and eagerness. It was different than the eagerness of his former followers. Much more innocent, and much less crazed. And if Harry was to leave this place before Hogwarts, his life would become much easier with wandless magic.

“I would, but I have never attempted it myself.”

The eagerness disappeared, and Tom felt guilty for disappointing Harry.

“But!” he added. “You and I can try to figure it out. After all, I am experienced with magic, and very skilled.”

Harry looked happy again. Something in Tom seemed to relax, and become joyful at the same time—a very different feeling from anything he had ever known.

“Ask me another question,” Tom prompted. It was almost fun to see the curiosity in Harry’s eyes.

However, Harry looked down at his lap, eyebrows furrowed. His next question was hesitant rather than excited. “Why aren’t you so angry anymore?”

Of course Harry had to ask another tough question, another debate between truth and precaution.

If he were being honest with himself, the reason was Harry. There was not much to do in this life, so trying to stop being terrifying towards the only person he had left was a welcome task. But he couldn’t tell Harry that, it was too close to expressing emotion. Emotion was weakness.

In a split second, Tom realized that there was no one around to consider him weak. All he had was Harry, and Harry was a child, and would not judge.

“I wanted to stop making you scared. Also, it became tiring to do nothing but yell.” He tried for casual in his tone, which Harry seemed to accept. There was a hint of shock in his bright green eyes. It was likely due to the fact that no one treated the boy particularly well, so any sign of care meant so much more to the boy.

Tom had never been cared for in his life. Not by his parents, not by the matrons at the orphanage, not by his classmates at Hogwarts, and certainly not by Dumbledore. Perhaps this is where he and Harry began to differ.

* * *

Harry had asked question after question. Magic was real, and he wanted to know everything. The way Tom explained magic was fascinating, making it seem all the more, well, magical.

Magic could unlock doors, turn cats into cauldrons, make objects fly through the air, or even make someone speak gibberish. There were potions that could do another hundred thousand things. The Wizarding world had its own plants and animals, all much more interesting than those of the muggle world. (Harry had asked what a muggle was, and Tom had made a face before answering in his normal animated manner.) Almost anything was possible in the magic world.

Their conversation went well into the night. Harry hadn’t noticed how late it was until he was yawning so hard that his eyes watered. Tom shook his head when he noticed this. “Okay, I’m pretty sure it’s time for you to get to sleep, boy. You’re only 7, you can’t be staying up this late.”

Harry wanted to pout. It was something he would never consider doing towards his aunt and uncle, or his teachers, but Tom was different. Aside from the dark robe and magic wand, Tom was reasonable and very polite, and patient with Harry’s questions. He was perhaps the nicest adult that Harry knew. There were still many questions left, but as he yawned again, it was obvious the questions had to wait.

“Alright, Tom.” Harry turned off the light and tucked himself into his thin blanket. “Good night.”

“Good night, Harry.”

That night, Harry dreamed of holding a wand and casting spells that turned his cupboard into a bedroom, and his hand-me-downs into proper clothes.

* * *

The next morning, Tom was still there. Half of Harry had expected yesterday to have been his imagination, a fantasy gone out-of-hand, but Tom sat in the same spot as last night. He was examining the wand he held in his hand, and muttering to himself.

“If the wand if a part of my magic, and it has done so much evil, does that make me evil too?”

“What did you say?” Harry wasn’t sure if he understood. Tom’s dark eyes met Harry’s bright green ones, and a moment passed before his response.

“Nothing.” The wand disappeared into his robes. Tom leaned forward, closer to Harry in the tiny cupboard. “Anyways, I think your relatives are awake, it’s probably best you get up now.”

Footsteps on the stairs above made the usual rain of dust in his cupboard. Harry quickly got out of bed, and started preparing the breakfast for the Dursely family.

Tom seemed much more interested in what Harry was doing. The feel of his gaze was almost unnerving, until he remembered that Tom had been with him his entire life. Tom had always been watching him, and the only difference now was that Harry finally had met him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey this fic has already gotten more attention than I thought it would??? Thank you guys so much, here's another chapter.

Tom had received a new question every moment the muggles were out of earshot. Between surprise, excitement and confusion, the boy’s expressions were the most entertaining and uplifting thing he had experienced in literal years.

“I get to go to this school too?!”

Tom hushed him, looking around the kitchen for that damned muggle woman. Harry’s voice hadn’t been too loud, but they had to be careful.

After a moment, and no shrieking from the banshee woman, it seemed safe for the conversation to continue. “Yes, I went there a long time ago, but Hogwarts doesn’t change much, generally speaking.” He remembered the rebellion of his youth, protesting the stagnation of the Wizarding World. He had wanted a better world for his people, but instead, his cause and its supporters turned into a cult, and his rebellion turned into a long, bloody war.

How could he have let his beliefs twist into something so dark and horrid?

“Tom?”

“Yes?”

Harry seemed to look concerned. “You do that a lot.”

“Do what?”

“Think.”

Tom wanted to laugh. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking. I’m still getting used to having a proper conversation, instead of yelling or brooding.”

Harry laughed quietly. He pulled the stopper from the bottom of the sink. The sight made Tom want to yell and curse all over again. The boy was barely tall enough to reach into the sink, and yet, he was forced to wash the dishes for fear of abuse from his relatives.

But he couldn’t protest it too much. Harry needed to live here, he needed to survive. Tom had a few ideas for a better living situation, but a majority of his potential plans weren’t certain.

* * *

Harry had been caught talking to the air.

Of course, it was Tom he was talking to, but the Durseley’s didn’t know that. Their conversation was about the four houses in Hogwarts. Tom was obviously partial to Slytherin. Harry was commenting, “I bet that’s where you ended up—“

“Harry Potter!”

Harry whipped around to face his Aunt Petunia, who clutching one of Dudley’s toys in her hands. Her eyes seemed to flare with rage, more rage than if he had left a dish dirty.

“What the hell are you doing? Were you talking to somebody?” Her shoes clicked on the ground as she nearly charged him. She pointed towards the counter. Coincidentally, that was exactly where Tom was standing. “There is no one there, you schizo. Our family is good and normal, except for your freakish little self.” A sharp finger jabbed into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Petunia.” He kept his eyes on the ground.

“We never should have taken you in. Our family would be much better without you around. I could have given Dudley all the attention he deserves, but no, you were crying and playing with Dudley’s toys and acting like you deserved something from me.”

His aunt seemed to be on a roll. He couldn’t do much against it but say, “I’m sorry, Aunt Petunia.”

“You’re just like your freakish parents.” Harry clenched his jaw at the mention of his parents. Hearing his aunt speak of his parents like that always make him feel sick, with both longing and something else he couldn’t describe. “Your mother should have stopped her deviant behavior, and kept going to school like a normal, good person would do.”

Harry didn’t know much about his parents, except for what his aunt and uncle would tell him in fits of anger. His parents were apparently irresponsible freaks. He didn’t like it.

“And God, your father was the worst kind of man. He helped her wreak havoc on all the good people of England.”

Harry’s fist clenched. A surge of angry energy seemed to shoot forth, and half a second later, the china in the cabinet shattered.

A shocked Petunia stared at the china cabinet in horror. “No, those were a gift from Vernon’s mother!”

Harry was just as shocked. Things like this had happened before, but he didn’t recognize it until now. Magic. That burst of energy was accidental magic, just as Tom described.

He wanted to stare at his hands in wonder, and try to make it happen again, but he was more worried about his aunt’s redoubled rage. One of her thin, pale hands grabbed the front of his shirt, and practically dragged him along. Towards his cupboard.

“You are going to stay in there until you’re ready to act like you’re normal, you little freak. No dinner for you.” The door slammed shut, leaving him in darkness.

Harry sat on the bed, brought his knees to his chest and buried his face, curling up like a ball. Aunt Petunia was so mean. Many of the things she hurt to hear. They were all reasons why he was a freak, he was horrible and a stain on their good name, a dirty little freak. Why did his aunt and uncle keep him around if they hated him so much?

A hand touched his shoulder. He jerked back, almost panicked, but saw that Tom was sitting next to him on the bed. His hand was tentatively raised. He looked very unsure of himself, which was an expression he hadn’t seen before on Tom.

“Sorry,” Harry murmured, settling into his spot again. “You surprised me.”

Tom breathed a laugh. “I surprised me too. I didn’t think you would actually feel it.”

Now that he thought about it, it was rather strange that Tom, a person with no actual body, could touch. But then again, Harry was the only one who could see Tom, so it made sense that he was the only one who could also feel Tom.

The hand came again to his shoulder, and this time, he didn’t flinch.

“You know, your aunt is lying.”

The words seemed to suck his heart from his chest. “What?”

“Your parents. They were not freaks, or irresponsible.” Tom was glaring at the cupboard door. “If anyone is the irresponsible freak, it is her.”

Harry didn’t know what to say. The concept was so foreign to him, and he wanted to protest against Tom, yet he felt more trust in Tom’s words than he ever did in Petunia’s.

“Your parents were wizards. James and Lily Potter were perfectly respected and upstanding members of the Wizarding World. They died…”

It made so much sense now. Harry was a wizard, so of course his parents were too. Aunt Petunia hated Harry’s magic, and because his parents were wizards, Aunt Petunia hated their magic as well. No wonder his aunt hated his parents. They were good people before they died. Did Tom know his parents? It sounded like he knew them.

Tom hadn’t finish his sentence. “How did they die?” Harry asked.

Tom still wasn’t looking at Harry, but Harry could still see his expression break. The features on his face were pulled in strange directions, maybe because he was feeling too many emotions at once, or maybe because he did not know how to express them clearly.

It was another minute before Tom finally spoke. “There was a war in the Wizarding World. There was a group of hateful wizards who wanted to rule, and they were led by an even more hateful man. That man had originally wanted to change things to be better, but as the war continued, he became insane.”

Harry wasn’t sure what this had to do with his parents, but he listened nonetheless.

“There were brave people who fought against these dangerous wizards. Your parents were fighters.” The information filled him with pride, but at the same time, Tom was still sad. Why was Tom so sad? “They died protecting you.”

There was nothing to say to that. The concept of his parents as wizards was still new and raw, let alone war and death. All he really knew was that it made him sad, and made him wish he could have had his parents to help soothe the hurt.

* * *

Tom wanted to do _anything_ but talk about this. He was the cause for the deaths of Harry’s parents. All of his suffering came from Voldemort. Though he had no word for it, the clawing inside his chest as he spoke was the closest he had ever come to guilt.

So he didn’t tell the truth. He didn’t lie either, but he talked about his life as if it was a different person who committed those atrocities. In a way, it was true. Tom had become truly insane, erratic, and consumed by dark magic towards the end of his life. Yet it was still him.

Tom looked over at Harry to see that the boy was nearing tears. He was staring at the same empty space as Tom was, and the pain in his chest redoubled at the sight. Even a censored version of the truth was so painful to this child. Again, memories of times in the orphanage came forward.

“Harry, you did accidental magic out there, right?” Tom was desperate to get Harry’s mind off of the tragedy of his parents, so he picked out a thought he had during the exchange with the muggle woman. “You were feeling emotional and overwhelmed, and the result was the shattering of some dining set.”

Harry nodded. He blinked away the tears before he looked at Tom. “Yeah, I don’t know how though.”

“I just told you, it was accidental magic.” Tom smiled slightly. “Do you remember anything weird happening beforehand?”

His hope was for Harry to learn to use his magic before he acquired a wand, meaning the first step was to teach Harry to first find his magic. Using accidental magic was wandless, and if he could learn from those outbursts, perhaps he could learn to do it at will.

It was a minute before Harry responded. “I felt like something shot from my hand.”

Tom could remember some times when he was truly angry at a subordinate, where it felt like his hand was prickling with energy. It did not happen often. Even before he had become stuck to the boy, he hadn’t felt it in years, not since he made his third horcrux.

“Did you feel angry?” Tom asked. At the time, the woman had been insulting the boy’s parents.

Harry shook his head, but stopped quickly. “Just for a moment. I felt… a lot of other things too.”

“Such as?”

“I didn’t like how she was talking about my parents. It made me feel like I was a bad person.”

Oh dear. An emotion Tom was all too familiar with. “It’s called shame.”

“Shame?”

“Shame is other people try to make you feel bad, and as a result, you feel like a bad person.”

It took a moment for Harry to process this. Tom did not interrupt him.

“You said my parents were good?” The boy’s voice had been quiet, but he said that with such softness and openness that Tom… hurt, somewhere.

Tom nodded. “The best kind of people.” To know that he had murdered those people. In their homes. Defenseless, betrayed, desperate. The begging to spare their son. Sacrificing themselves to protect that which they loved most.

And somehow, that was enough. Here he was, defeated, and here was the boy, alive.

Tom took a slow breath before speaking. “Your parents loved you more than life itself.”

There were tears on the boy’s face. “They did? Then why did they leave me here? Aunt Petunia says that they abandoned me because they hated me.”

Hearing the boy say that felt like a violation, sparking anger within him. “Your aunt lies because she is full of hate.”

Tom was once full of hate. The parallel stung.

Harry seemed to accept the statement, or at least, process it. There wasn’t anything else Tom had to say on the matter, should he wait for the boy to speak? Should he talk again of the accidental magic?

But before Tom reached a decision, Harry was asleep.

* * *

Harry had learned a lot from Tom. Even though Tom may have been invisible to everyone else, there must’ve been a time where he was a real person. Otherwise, he would not be able to tell Harry about Hogwarts or describe dragons or explain wand types.

There would be times that Tom would look at him and be sad. Maybe Tom felt shame, too, for something that happened when he was a real person.

Sometime after turning 8, Harry finally asked.

“Why aren’t you a real person anymore?”

Tom’s sharp eyes were suddenly focused on him, his face a mixture of surprise and confusion. “What?”

“Well, it’s obvious that you weren’t always attached to me, otherwise you couldn’t tell me about the wizards. So what made you attached to me?”

Several expressions crossed his face. It took a minute and some half-formed words before he finally had an answer. (That’s why Tom was so wonderful, he always had an answer!)

“I had done bad things. I think that being attached to you is supposed to teach me.”

How could Tom have done bad things? And Tom was teaching him, not the other way around?

“Tom?”

“Yes, child?”

“Why did you do bad things?” There had to be a reason, Tom couldn’t possibly have done bad things just because he wanted to be bad.

This question seemed to take longer for him to answer, but he answered nonetheless. “I was scared for a long time, then it turned into anger. Because I was strong, I thought I was better than other people.” He shook his head slowly. “I was a bad person, Harry.”

In the cartoons Harry occasionally glimpsed, there were supervillains that liked to be evil, and would try to hurt the heroes. But in Harry’s life, no one liked to say that they were evil. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon said that they were good people, even while they forced him to cook the bacon over and over again until he got it right, calling him names the entire time. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were only nice to Dudley.

The school teachers were sometimes nice, sometimes scary. His favorite had been Mrs. Williams, who liked to give him snacks before he went to lunch, and never yelled at him if he made a mistake. Mrs. Pensley was his least favorite, since she would yell at the class when they got too loud, and take away points for bad handwriting.

Tom had said he was a bad person, but he had only ever been nice to Harry. Well, actually, when he started speaking to Harry. Before that, he had been angry all the time, and yelling so much. Maybe Tom had already learned from his mistakes, like how Mrs. Williams said that everyone needed to do.

Tom had clearly been watching, waiting for Harry to respond.

“What did I teach you, Tom?”

Tom gave something close to a smile. “To be a good person.”

Harry gave his best smile back. Could he hug Tom? It wouldn’t hurt to try. When he reached around the man, his arms closed in on a solid figure, one he could hold. So he did.

“Oh,” Tom said faintly. There was a pat on Harry’s shoulder. “Thank you, Harry.” Tom’s voice was thick, like he had to force it beyond a wall of emotion.

Harry looked up and shined his smile again, still holding onto Tom. “I think you’re a good person now.”

For the first time, Harry saw Tom’s eyes fill with tears. A hand came to hold the back of his head. That touch alone filled him with comfort beyond anything he’d ever experienced. No one had ever touched him nicely before.

“I had a good teacher,” Tom said, giving something like a smile, despite his tears.


End file.
